**spoiler alert** The ending came too swiftly, here, which is a strange thing to say for a mystery, I think. This one was more full of personal matter**spoiler alert** The ending came too swiftly, here, which is a strange thing to say for a mystery, I think. This one was more full of personal matters for Grafton's P.I. Kinsey Milhone: she starts the story being framed for insurance fraud, and things only get worse from there. Her curiosity leads her to question, and become a bit entangled with, a family she used to know: the wealthy Wood family. The oldest son, Lance, is being framed for insurance fraud as well, and one of the sisters, Ash, is an old friend of Kinsey's. The other three siblings -- bossy, seductive Ebony, aloof, fashionable Olive, and playboy, artsy Bass -- flit in and out of Kinsey's investigation as she tries to figure out who might be framing their brother -- and her -- for setting fire to a company warehouse.

The crime itself seems uninteresting, but don't worry; others get added as the story goes along. Soon a woman Kinsey's met only briefly (and liked quite a bit) is murdered, and then Kinsey herself is nearly killed when a bomb goes off at Olive's house, killing the hostess and seriously wounding our heroine.

But wait, there's more! If being burnt (literally and figuratively) isn't enough action for one detective at Christmas, there's also the re-emergence of her first ex-husband, the beautiful and possibly sociopathic Daniel. Some secrets linking him (and their sudden break-up) to the Wood family emerge mid-way through the book and bring everything into one, tight, unfriendly package -- and all of it ends up having almost nothing to do with the way the mystery resolves.

What?

Yeah. This is what I mean by the ending coming too soon. The warehouse fire is the spark -- ahem -- for everything here, but that crime ends up being far, far less bizarre and awful than the motives behind it. The motive for vengeance that leads the arsonist/bomber/all around awful guy to do what he's done is absolutely opaque throughout the book and not at all accessible to the detective or the reader as things go along. That's right: you read for 200 pages and in the last 15, only, can you put together the pieces. It's unusual for Grafton and ultimately disappointing, in a way; it feels like perhaps Grafton wasn't sure how to get everything tied up while also getting the chance to air so very, very much dirty laundry.

Was it worth it? Sure, it was a fun read. It just wasn't the traditional mystery story.

**spoiler alert** This is one of the few Wallander books that kept me up well past my bedtime, wanting to know what would happen -- well, not what, bu**spoiler alert** This is one of the few Wallander books that kept me up well past my bedtime, wanting to know what would happen -- well, not what, but how. That's the beauty of most of Mankell's mysteries; from the beginning, we know what the conclusion will be, because we see the hunters (Wallander and his detective crew) and the hunted (the killers, the criminals) simultaneously. We always know who we're looking for, even when Wallander doesn't, so every new page is turned just to see how and when he'll manage to put the pieces together.

In this story, which starts with a murder in Africa that triggers a serial killer into action, the police are chasing ghosts the entire story through. They have no idea what's going on -- and, really, I had no idea how they were ever going to catch this killer. A woman has decided to start killing men who have been brutal to other women. She goes about it in the most painful and awful ways possible, killing one man in a pungee pit, another after a prolonged, weakening kidnapping, another in a jute sack thrown into a lake. The murders and their descriptions are cold, calculated, and shocking. They were hard to read about. I kept reading because I wanted to see how the police could possibly close the gaps.

I kept reading, also, because the case is never the only thing going on here. It's brutal and it takes up all the space in every page its on, but there are other factors at play here. Wallander's father dies in this book; the town he lives in suddenly has a militia uprising that threatens not just his ideas of law and order, but the safety of those he works with. He is, around all of this, dreaming of getting a house, a dog, and possibly married to his long-term, long-distance girlfriend, Baiba. It's a lot.

In fact, it's too much, and Mankell allows for this. This book ends with Wallander as broken as he's ever been by events largely beyond his control. I finished this book -- the only one I had left in the series -- and I immediately wanted to read more. Not because I crave the mystery so much, but because this character is so well-formed. His life doesn't stop -- it never stops -- because he's a policeman. And every book is better, and harder, for that....more

This is a back-and-forth book of "historical" fiction by young (28ish) Graham Moore. It alternates between chapters in which Harold White, a young (28This is a back-and-forth book of "historical" fiction by young (28ish) Graham Moore. It alternates between chapters in which Harold White, a young (28ish) Harold White tries to solve the mystery of a man who has died at the preeminent Sherlock Holmes convention and chapters in which Arthur Conan Doyle and his friend, Bram Stoker, try to solve the mystery of a dead girl in a bathtub in the early 20th century. The White chapters center on a search for Conan Doyle's missing diary, in this book dated from October to December of 1900, the precise time during which we follow Conan Doyle in the other chapters.

It's a difficult balance. Sometimes Moore strikes it beautifully, and sometimes he falters. The middle of the book is devoted almost wholly to the Conan Doyle detection, which is a blessing -- because it is the more interesting part of the story, by far -- and a curse, as Conan Doyle is something of a grating character here. He is more interesting to read about than Harold White, perhaps because White is so plainly an amalgamation (as Moore admits in his author's note at the end) of many modern Sherlockians -- fans and devotees of Sherlock Holmes. Yet it is hard to read about Conan Doyle as he actually was, a man who looked down upon his readers, a man who was sharply against women's suffrage, a hypocritical, landed elitist during a time of poverty and challenge. Then again, I think it's his faults and unpleasant traits that make him the heart of this book; there is nothing so sticky upon which to hang a care for young Harold, who gets the normal shock that one so young and innocent and bookish always does in a book like this: having gotten everything he wants, he wants nothing but to go back to how things were.

This book at times delighted me, and I spent short hours lost in Moore's created world. When it frustrated me, it did so through the same charms it used to seduce me -- the promise of a formal, formulaic mystery was never revoked.

Here's the basic summary: A nameless man is found stabbed to death in the queue before a popular London play. Though surrounded by people, no one manaHere's the basic summary: A nameless man is found stabbed to death in the queue before a popular London play. Though surrounded by people, no one manages to see the murder -- carried out with a small, sharp dagger, slipped almost expertly into the man's back at an angle guaranteed to kill -- and no one comes to claim the man's body. Through dogged investigation, Scotland Yard's Inspector Grant must figure out who the man in the queue is, what he was doing there, and why someone would want to kill him.

This is a search done well before Google, well before fingerprint databases, well before the tricks of NCIS and CSI. Grant pages through fingerprint cards to try -- unsuccessfully -- to identify his victim. He has to send a man to every department store that sells the type of tie he was wearing, hoping to identify its purchaser. The biggest break they get in the case is that the man's face is familiar to one of the usual suspects -- in short, the case breaks from a bit of luck and a lot of hard, shoe-leather work. This is actually more fun to read about than people tapping on gadgets, running computer searches for priors, and the like. It makes the human element loom much larger, and Grant is an interesting human to have at the center of the case.

Once upon a time, Elizabeth Mackintosh published her very first mystery story, in 1929, using the name "Gordon Daviot." This name was later replaced by her other, more famous pseudonym, Josephine Tey, which is the name that drew me to that first book in question, The Man in the Queue. I've read the famous The Daughter of Time, which stars the same inspector seen here, Grant, and I've read and enjoyed The Franchise Affair,, where Grant only makes brief appearances. What sets this book apart from those is its steadfast use of and affection for London. The Grant who appears in The Daughter of Time is an older Grant, holed up in a hospital room, unable to prowl around or investigate on his own -- it's a mystery as much inside his head as in any active location. The Franchise Affair takes place in the country and is mostly investigated by a country lawyer.

This book, however, lives and thrives within London and its surroundings. Certainly, Grant does venture to the country for a weekend -- on the job -- during the case, but mostly, we're in and around his usual haunts. It's a standard way to set up a series -- but it's also more daring than most mysteries of today. The case looks to be just another puzzle for up-and-comer Allan Grant, who's known to have good hunches at Scotland Yard. Yet his hunch in this case -- he eventually blames and pursues a close friend of the dead man's -- ends up being completely wrong. Unlike the more modern cases, where I feel writers let their detectives have the wrong man or woman arrested all the time, Grant's mistake has consequences -- for his own confidence and for the confidence of his superiors in him. There are consequences for mistakes. What a novel concept in the realm of the all-seeing-detective mystery!

The charm of this mystery is as much its time as its story -- and it packs a wallop of charm....more

**spoiler alert** This book was pretty delightful, in the way that only a book that makes you tear up in public can be. Set just after (and also just**spoiler alert** This book was pretty delightful, in the way that only a book that makes you tear up in public can be. Set just after (and also just before, and during) the first World War in the English countryside, this book tells the story of Maisie Dobbs -- at first, just an interesting female private detective. Maisie, however, isn't the typical detective -- and not just because of her gender. Her investigations are psychology-based; she investigates for her clients and, in doing so, often uncovers secrets they must deal with themselves. The first example of this comes when she takes a case for a man who suspects his wife of cheating. When Maisie follows and befriends the woman, she discovers that the man she visits is, actually, a victim of a particularly sinister post-war gathering place for the most injured (and shell-shocked) of soldiers. In investigating this woman's secrets, though, Maisie (predictably, as the formula demands) must also unearth her own.

Though the book sticks to that predictable, reliable pattern, it's written with such charm and grace -- like a country cousin of "All Quiet on the Western Front," perhaps -- that both stories stay equally interesting as the book dips between the present and Maisie's pre-war past. We follow her as she grows from a bright, poor maid into the puzzling darling of her benefactor, and along the way, we meet the men and women who shaped her, broke her heart, and mended it all again.

I look forward to the next book in the series, though I do this with a bit of trepidation. To read another story about Maisie Dobbs where all of the mystery happens in the current time would be less interesting, yet to retread any past ground would discount the loveliness (and necessity) of this story. I'm interested to see where Winspear went next....more

Does anyone need someone else to tell them this book is great? OK, then -- this book is great. Some of the stories are stronger than others, but onlyDoes anyone need someone else to tell them this book is great? OK, then -- this book is great. Some of the stories are stronger than others, but only in a minor way, and they all have such high, singing points of emotion that there's no way to separate them adequately -- except, perhaps, by location, by technique and form, and maybe even by point of view (though not often by voice).

This might be a harder book to love for anyone who grew up as a contemporary to its characters -- I missed them by about 10 years -- but in every story, the level of imagination is fabulous. Oh, the places you'll go: a one-night stand with a kleptomaniac; an African safari; the opening night for a terrible punk band; a record producer's gleaming office, polluted by the presence of a freshly-caught fish; a PR party where everyone is scalded with oil; a mad dictator's encampment; the solar power array in the backyard desert of a home paralyzed by guilt and by the love/demands of an autistic child; the future; the past.

More fun than I've recently had reading any award-winning book, by far. ...more

**spoiler alert** This was a better, if much stranger, book than the last in the Maisie Dobbs series. This time, Maisie finds herself investigating th**spoiler alert** This was a better, if much stranger, book than the last in the Maisie Dobbs series. This time, Maisie finds herself investigating three cases at once: she's called in to help a 13-year-old girl who stands accused of killing her pimp; she's asked by a friend of her benefactor to establish, once and for all, that his son is dead; and her oldest friend asks her to find the final resting place of her brother, killed in the war. As the last two cases merge (predictably, if too conveniently) and the first is pushed into the background, Maisie faces, for the first time in the series, real threats to her own life and health.

I am actually not a tremendous fan of action-mysteries. I like to watch the cerebral working of the detective, but rarely ever do I enjoy the chase scenes at the end. Though I was afraid that was where this book might have been headed, it stayed true, instead, to its quirky character's psychological training and pursuits. The tension created was always more mental than physical when Maisie finally confronted those who would hurt her, which I appreciated.

The book did a fair job, as well, of creating a sense of distraction throughout the entire book that was natural for the character. There were too many characters at many points -- in fact, every character introduced during the series was present here in person (save one: Lady Rowan was absent, though her husband was not), making for two books' full of Maisie's people: her father, her mentor, her boyfriend, her assistant, her best friend, her old lover, her dead mother, her friends from her days in service, her favorite constable, and her least favorite constable made appearances.

The trickiest part of the book is perhaps the strangest; after two books full of hero worship toward Maisie's mentor, Maurice, he is here revealed to have led a different life than she had suspected. The author draws back from considering him any kind of villain, and in so doing, makes Maisie appear foolish for having concerns about his character and her own safety around him. The ending -- the reconciliation -- between them is a bit too easy. It feels forced by the author's knowledge that the book has gone on too long already. I hope the rift and its repercussions appear again in the next book.

I was worried, as I picked up the second book in the Maisie Dobbs series, that it couldn't be as good as the first. The first book, Maisie Dobbs, travI was worried, as I picked up the second book in the Maisie Dobbs series, that it couldn't be as good as the first. The first book, Maisie Dobbs, travels through time to reveal its main character's life history, which isn't quite incidental to the plot (but is, really, quite close). The second book would have to travel fresh territory: readers already know Maisie's secret history, after all, so the new charge set to author Jacqueline Winspear is to keep the story interesting while keeping it in the present.

A third of the way through the new book, I was a little disappointed. The mystery in Birds of a Feather surrounds a run-away daughter -- a thirty-something runaway, that is, and an overbearing father who wants her "returned." The mystery itself grows in danger as the book progresses and the daughter's oldest friends are found dead, one by one, but the story isn't nearly as gripping as the mystery of the first book because the characters involved aren't nearly so sympathetic -- until, about halfway through, two things happen. First, Winspear ups the drama in the book significantly by introducing a second love interest for Maisie, a drug problem for her closest associate, and a bit of deus-ex-machina difficulty with and for her father; second, she starts making the dead women sympathetic. This was enough to pull me through the rest of the book, and I was rewarded for this by an unexpected but interesting ending that revealed further complexity in both father-daughter pairs.

My biggest problem with this book was that Winspear's sleight-of-hand in concealing the answer from the reader was far too obvious. Several times, Maisie finds "something" at a crime scene -- but what "something" is or means is not revealed to the reader, lest she be smarter than our heroine and therefore able to figure out the ending. It's at least 100 pages between the first mention of finding "something" and the revelation in words of what that "something" is, and it's not terribly revealing, even then -- which makes me believe that Winspear could have better served her audience by showing precisely what the character found and then dismissing it as insignificant. (This is only slightly more suave than the leave-it-out-entirely-until-the-reveal tricks that Agatha Christie used to play).

Instead, there are two mysteries here: the one Maisie Dobbs is investigating and the separate mystery of what she's found. It's mildly frustrating and a little insulting, and if the rest of the writing didn't show real sparks of creativity and character development, it might be enough to scare a worried reader away....more

I'm giving three stars instead of four for this book, which had some of the best and worst moments of the series so far. The mystery involves a painteI'm giving three stars instead of four for this book, which had some of the best and worst moments of the series so far. The mystery involves a painter, Nick Bassington-Hope, who falls from a scaffolding on the eve of unveiling his newest work at a gallery. Nick's twin sister, Georgiana, engages Maisie Dobbs to investigate whether his death was really an accident, as the police claim, or murder, which she suspects.

The piece of art itself hasn't been seen by any of Nick's closest friends or family, which makes the mystery a double search: for the truth of Nick's death and for the content of the painting. In investigating this, Maisie must wander through a somewhat foreign side of London: the fun side. While there's a lot of interesting mystery and detection, the most engaging part of the story has to do with the expanding social education of Maisie Dobbs. She goes dancing (on duty), she tries to enjoy her new flat, she --spoilers!!-- breaks up with Andrew Dene in order to be more independent. She's also broken free from her old mentor (after a fight in the third book). She barely mentions Captain Lynch. She even wears fashionable trousers! Somehow, though, in this book Maisie seems to have less fun than ever. Her decision to break up with Dene is quick and, for someone who's supposed to think so clearly about everything, muddled in its reasons and motivations. Her investigations are interesting, but she never seems fully interested in them. Instead, the book bounces from point to point, place to place, without ever comfortably inhabiting one strand with the full power of Maisie's supposedly legendary intelligence.

Throughout the book, there's nice attention to the struggle Maisie feels in her societal position. She's not of the same class she was when she was born, but she's not of the carefree upper class that she serves and socializes with, either. She's caught in between, constantly wanting to move ahead but feeling bad for those she leaves behind. There's actually several well-done moments that reveal this throughout, including her too-late intervention when her assistant's child falls ill. Though as a reader I wanted to see Maisie do more for Billy and his family, the reality of the times and situation prevented her. That was actually nice, if difficult, to read.

The problem is that her internal struggles come at the price of losing some attention to the external struggles of her investigation. Though Maisie may not be that interested at all times in what's going on with the Bassington-Hope case, it's imperative that the reader should be -- so the twists and turns, red herrings and blind alleys, that the author insists on exploring feel very much like not only Maisie going through the motions but also the writer. I wanted to care more about the entire mystery, but the players at the center of it were obscured for nearly the whole story -- making the final, emotional climax not very emotional at all. Like Maisie, we must lie in wait for the "villain" of the story to confess his crimes out loud in order to understand. A better story might have led us to understanding what he'd done without ever having made him give the Bond-villain speech at the end.

Overall, it was fine, but not richly written like the first volume. The fifth book promises a change from the norm, and I do look forward to picking it up soon.

This was a return to form for the Winspear mysteries -- a form that felt almost Agatha Christie-like. Maisie Dobbs gets a call from the son of her benThis was a return to form for the Winspear mysteries -- a form that felt almost Agatha Christie-like. Maisie Dobbs gets a call from the son of her benefactor (Lady Rowan Compton). James Compton is coming close to taking over the family business, and he'd like Maisie to investigate the strange vandalism problems around a property they are considering purchasing. This sends her out to the hop-picking fields with her assistant and his family. There, she discovers not only is there more to the crimes than meets the eye, of course, but also that there's a band of gypsies nearby. (Thus, Maisie's own gypsy history -- her grandmother ran away from her gypsy family to marry her grandfather -- is revealed.) Working with a local reporter and against a town wall of silence, Maisie uncovers a fresh horror from the first World War that implicates an entire town in violence.

The crime itself is a bit darker than those that have come up so far, and though Maisie and the author try hard to make a neat ending, it's basically impossible. I liked this, a bit, as it made all the twists and turns seem more necessary and a bit more realistic. The side-plot about her assistant's wife's continuing grief over their newly-dead child is actually significant for this story and the next, and it offers a very nice continuity of feeling and situation between this book and the last.

Maisie's on-going struggle to find herself a niche is mentioned again, but there's no discernible personal progress. What there is is a giant flag planted to let us know that Maisie Dobbs is a chameleon and an outsider at the same time. She's able to befriend both the townspeople (in the person of the bar-and-hotel owner), the gypsies, and the Londoner hop-pickers, and while she hears and a few times even mildly corrects prejudicial statements toward all three groups, she is never insulted by anyone. She never feels the sting of the prejudice personally, and this feels like a bit of a loss for the book. There seems to be a real chance for Maisie to grow through hardship, but she never encounters much hardship, even when everyone around her does.

Author Winspear flirts with giving Maisie Dobbs supernatural powers throughout the series, and never more directly than in this book, where Maisie actually dowses for evidence using a broken hazelnut branch. Normally, the turn to the supernatural as an explanation would be annoying to me, but in these books it generally works all right -- because otherwise, Maisie's ability to always be right about everything would have no in-text explanation at all.

One final note that may (or may not) have future implications: Maisie is more at ease with James Compton than she has been with any other male character in the entire series, which does lead one to wonder whether he might make a return appearance. Then again, Winspear is so far the champion of making certain Maisie has no real romantic entanglements, so... perhaps it's nothing, or perhaps it's just the over-active imagination of a reader who would like for Maisie to find a real romance again....more

It's strange, but somehow also entertaining, to read a "ripped from today's headlines" story set in 1931. In this book, the absolutely undefeatable MaIt's strange, but somehow also entertaining, to read a "ripped from today's headlines" story set in 1931. In this book, the absolutely undefeatable Maisie Dobbs is recruited by Scotland Yard's Special Branch to assist in investigating a terror plot, after her name is included in a threatening letter sent to the Yard. Right away, two things promise this book could be much more interesting than the last few: First, Maisie is actually injured in a suicide bombing not far from her flat, and her injury results from a miscalculation that she makes in approaching a man with a very black aura; Second, her assignment to Scotland Yard puts her back in the proximity of Detective Inspector Richard Stratton and in the orbit of his soon-to-be boss, Chief Detective Inspector Robbie MacFarlane. Stratton made no secret, in the first few books, of his attraction to Maisie Dobbs, and though he's been gruff and difficult a few times, he's one of the better characters in the book -- made nice enough that the reader wants to see him win Maisie's heart, even if Maisie doesn't. In this book, we get a nice slip into familiarity with both men from our increasingly lonely and isolated heroine.

Oh, right, there's also this mystery. Maisie and the Yarders are investigating threats sent from someone who wants to see full pensions restored to everyone who left the war. This leads to a lot of lectures from professionals about the sorry state of mental health care during and post-World War I. Thousands of shell-shocked men have been released from hospitals with no or little pension money, deemed little better than deserters for their problems. To attack the issue from another angle, Billy Beale's wife, Doreen, is also committed during this book after a suicidal incident. Her treatment at the first institution she's sent to is barbaric and deeply troubling. For a bit more synchronicity in the story, Maisie's best friend Priscilla is also beset by depression. When it rains, it pours.

The hammer blows of Winspear's indignation over the terrible treatments, therapies, and stigmas of the 1930s land heavily throughout the story, though the crimes planned and committed by the mentally-ill villain are so heinous that even those anvil-like reminders of his plight can't render him sympathetic. This is not a light-hearted mystery, nor is it one that someone whose stomach is turned by the thought of animal cruelty should read. Chlorine gas, mustard gas, and the like show up to extremely ill effect.

At the end of the book, I wanted desperately to see what Maisie might accomplish were she to join the Scotland Yard team (not that the offer was made). The last book had made me wonder if she wasn't, perhaps, a better character away from the familiar faces of London; this book has made me think she'd be very effective and entertaining if she were thrown again and again into the social mix of the Scotland Yard detectives.

This book has made me despair for the American publishing industry in a way I hadn't, yet. Why despair? Because it is only the constant pressure to prThis book has made me despair for the American publishing industry in a way I hadn't, yet. Why despair? Because it is only the constant pressure to produce, to publish, that would make a company like HarperCollins and a writer with the ability of Ann Patchett push forward this work, which is at best uneven and at worst something that I would expect to emerge from a blinded-by-friendship writer's group. Does that seem harsh? If it is, it's because I expect -- perhaps unfairly -- more of Patchett than this book has offered.

In State of Wonder, the main character, Marina Singh, is a Minnesotan doctor whose office/lab-mate, Anders Eckman, has died in the Amazonian jungle of Brazil while on assignment for the pharmaceutical company for which they both work. Marina's boss/lover, Mr. Fox, and Eckman's widow, Karen, pressure her to go looking for his remains and the full story of his death. Mr. Fox also wants Marina to finish Eckman's assignment: track down the rogue researcher that the company is funding in the jungle, find out how her fertility project/miracle pill is progressing, and report back.

The loveliest scenes in the book happen in Minnesota, where Marina must break the horrible news to Mrs. Eckman and come to her own sad peace with his death. These scenes also offer us some flashbacks about the character that provide further reason for her reluctance to go to the jungle: she knows the rogue physician who's out there, Dr. Annick Swenson, as she was once Swenson's student. A negative experience under Swenson's supervision led to Marina's abrupt shift into pharmacology, away from obstetrics/gynecology, and she's not thrilled to have to face the abandoned mentor again. But go she does, because, as the author is careful to tell us (though not show us), she is a sensible woman who follows and often exceeds directions and orders.

It is in Brazil that both the book and its main character lose their ways. There was never much hope for Marina. She is forced to live out the title for the length of the book, constantly in a "state of wonder" that makes her the main engine for silly questions. Though we are meant to believe that she is an intelligent woman of some poise, she is constantly flummoxed, bewildered, exhausted, angry, unreasonable, or just plain weird. It is absolutely realistic to believe that a woman accustomed to Minnesotan living would be out of her depth, immediately, in the Brazilian jungle, but it is tiring to see that she hardly learns from any experience she has. Her extraordinarily commanding and, initially, unsympathetic mentor/hero/objective, Dr. Swenson, is built to point out exactly how unreasonable Marina is acting at every turn -- and while she's often so vocally odious that a reader does not want to side with her, she's also, as the book tells us again and again, right.

Ann Patchett's other books have done well at placing "normal" characters into extraordinary circumstances and then showing the internal and external effects. The Patron Saint of Liars was a book that made me believe in the utility of the happy ending again. The Magician's Assistant played beautifully within a created (but well-researched) world of sleight-of-hand, love, and difficulty; the award-winning Bel Canto was bolder in its imagination, and bolder in its reward. That book's ending was almost criminally neat, in some ways, but it was also proof that Patchett knew she would often have to kill her darling characters to create a sense of consequence similar to reality.

In this book, as in her last, Patchett's ability to imagine a difficult situation is still firmly in place, firmly wonderful, but her reliance on created coincidence makes the books much more difficult to believe. In Run, a woman just happens to be hit by a car; a boy just happens to see it occur; a family just happens to recognize the significance. In this book, the coincidences are too great to list, but by the time a boat just happens to take a wrong turn down precisely the right river and see the right face at the right time, there's nothing left that's impossible in this world. It is revealed to be completely one of imagination, completely unreal, and though the author lands a few heavy blows at the end to show that it's not a world without consequences, it's all too over-created for a reader to completely believe or care that anyone here could be hurt. We are meant to read this book in a constant state of wonder, perhaps, but to do so requires a suspension of disbelief that I cannot lend Patchett by the end....more

After all of the reviews and the hoop-la, I went into The Help with certain expectations. I expected spunky characters, funny scenes, a bit of main-chAfter all of the reviews and the hoop-la, I went into The Help with certain expectations. I expected spunky characters, funny scenes, a bit of main-character soul-searching, possibly a bit of romance, and a triumph of the human spirit over great odds. I expected these things to happen in predictable, serviceable prose and end with a heart-lifting happy ending.

I was right, and I was wrong. The Help is all of these things, and it's better than these things. Told from three points of view, the book starts in 1962 at the moment when three different women are about to encounter some serious changes and challenges. The first POV character is Aibileen, a smart, gentle African-American maid who works for Miss Elizabeth Leefolt and has raised 17 children all over Jackson, Mississippi, including Mae Mobeley, the Leefolt's baby daughter. In the first chapter, Aibileen serves lunch to Miss Leefolt's bridge club, which includes Miss Hilly Holbrook, Hilly's mother, Miss Walters, and Hilly and Elizabeth's friend, Skeeter Phelan. Aibileen overhears the women discussing Hilly's newest mission: encouraging women to build separate bathrooms on to their homes so that they no longer have to share facilities with their black maids. She feels some fury over this, and then more when Miss Leefolt actually does construct a separate bathroom for Aibileen in the garage -- because no one crosses Hilly Holbrook.

Miss Walters is the approaching-senile employer of Aibileen's best friend, Minny Jackson. Minny, the second point-of-view character, is an outspoken maid who's glad for the job with a woman who's hard of hearing. She loses this job in the worst way possible when the progressively evil Hilly first tries to hire her away, then makes it impossible for her to find another job. Her searches lead her out in the country to the new wife of Hilly's ex-boyfriend, where she starts a job unlike any other she's ever had.

Skeeter Phelan is the other point of view character. Freshly home from Ole Miss, where she earned a diploma but failed, in her mother's eyes, in what should have been her real mission -- to find a husband -- she's casting about for something to do with her time. Though Stockett tries to create her as a character who has faced hardships (she's very tall and doesn't care about fashion, making her a constant target for her mother's sharp criticism), Skeeter really seems to live a life of bored luxury. She finds herself a job as a housekeeping columnist at the newspaper and turns to Aibileen for help with cleaning advice, as she's never cleaned a house in her life.

These three women slowly circle one another and then engage on a new project together, one that has the possibility of endangering all three of them physically, socially, emotionally, and financially.

None of that was particularly surprising; what was surprising was the moment when, about 300 pages into this 442-page book, I had the strong urge to read the last five or six pages before continuing. Stockett puts just enough bad into her book full of uplifting ideals and realizations that I was, for a moment, very concerned for what might happen to these characters. That's a compliment; I became involved enough in every character's story that they became real to me. Stockett's clear, consistent prose creates interesting characters. I enjoyed reading about them.

Now, there are certainly ways that the book was predictable in less positive ways. {SPOILERS AHEAD} I knew this book had to have a happy ending, and it did; the consequences that rained down for the characters were small, distant, or for the best. Skeeter has some of the hardest falls in the book -- the end of an affair, a loss of good opinion (though this isn't drawn out enough) for her mother, the discovery that a beloved old maid has died -- but she ends the book in the brightest place, with the most certain, shining future. In some ways, this is the only way a book like this could end; those who are evil are punished, those who aren't triumph and take strength from that triumph. In some ways, though, this is a disappointment, because it promotes an idea that "things will work out" that just isn't true. It takes some of the pain out of the punches within the book, and the punches Stockett lands against white women should hurt. They don't, here; there's just enough room left in this book for any reader to go through and not recognize any part of her own family history or current self in any but the boldest, bravest characters.

But hey, a happy ending. It's summer. It's nice. It's entertainment. It's going to be a movie, soon, and yeah, I'll watch that with popcorn....more

The Devil in the White City is, really, two books in one: two parallel fairy tales that happened at the same place at the same time without ever complThe Devil in the White City is, really, two books in one: two parallel fairy tales that happened at the same place at the same time without ever completely intersecting. One story has as its hero Daniel Burnham, the overseeing architect and visionary behind the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. The other stars a man who goes by H. H. Holmes, among other names, who uses the Fair's proximity to his own business to plot and carry out gruesome murders. Both stories are compelling, and Erik Larson writes them both with the same eye and ear for suspense: I would leave a chapter wondering, nearly aloud, what would happen next to Holmes's residents, only to find myself immediately re-immersed in Burnham's quest to make the Fair perfect (or at least profitable).

This is made possible by a level of detail that reveals Larson as the best of researchers: methodical, careful, conscious of the difference between what's interesting and impressive and what's overkill. I'm reminded of reading Seabiscuit and realizing the intelligence it takes to know that recording the total gallons of lemonade consumed is a much more interesting way of showing how many people attended any single event than a mere population accounting. Larson provides glorious, fascinating details, details that more than once sent me scrambling for more information. Case in point: Do you know how large the original Ferris wheel was? Hint: train cars were the passenger vehicles.

The most interesting part of this book, to me, is the shape of these parallel tracks. Though Burnham is the mayor of the titular White City, he is the man who (arguably) loses the most as the book progresses. Holmes, who lends himself the Devil nickname, is successful beyond anyone's wildest, evilest dreams. Thus you have an entire story where the main beacon of "good" intent is constantly beset by obstacles and downright tragedies while a man who deserves nothing but horrors lives (mostly) a smug and happy life.

An enjoyable read -- though one so well done that the creepy details of Holmes's final crimes will probably haunt me for a good long time.

Toby Barlow's novel-in-verse isn't quietly brilliant -- it isn't quiet about anything. Barlow deals in the loud and the flashy, and he exploits a formToby Barlow's novel-in-verse isn't quietly brilliant -- it isn't quiet about anything. Barlow deals in the loud and the flashy, and he exploits a form -- freeverse poetry -- that's not always an automatic fit for explosions and blood anymore. Here, though, it is a good fit because Barlow creates characters who are most tolerable, most comprehensible, in small bites. He creates a world behind them that is only understandable if it's left to the reader's mind to complete.

In a novel, that would be exhausting. In a verse novel, with so much blank space on the page, it's fitting....more

At times very witty, this book is exactly what I knew it would be from the start: depressing as all hell by the end. I know, you're thinking, "What? AAt times very witty, this book is exactly what I knew it would be from the start: depressing as all hell by the end. I know, you're thinking, "What? An Ian McEwan book with Climate Change as a subtopic? How could it make you doubt the goodness of the world entirely?" Yeah.

McEwan does two things that make me doomed to repeat this pattern of reading his books: 1). He writes tragically beautiful sentences that stretch over full paragraphs and half-pages with nary a comma out of place. These sentences often manage to convey within them both whimsy and pathos in such subtle doses that it's not until later, when I review them in my head in the shower or driving my car, that I realize, oh, damn it, that was cold and horrible. But it used such lovely words!

2). McEwan picks such interesting topics and such realistic worlds, populates them with a number of sympathetic people, and then makes his main character the one person all of these interesting people and things revolve around. So once you start, you can't stop -- not necessarily because you always care for the main character, but because you know, soon, he (it's nearly always a he) is going to do something that really, grandly effects the lives of the perfectly nice people around him, and you care.

So it is (was) with Solar, which depicts a thoroughly unpleasant, amoralish man, Michael Beard, one-time winner of the Nobel Prize in physics who now floats about the globe being unpleasant, oafish, and oddly attractive to younger, prettier women. This is the kind of stereotypical male dreamland I'd usually run screaming from, but McEwan makes it clear that this situation is exactly as horrible and hateful as it sounds. It's not a triumph for this fat, balding old man (Beard's own mental description of himself) to bed these many women; it's a failure in a long, long line of failures as a person. His one winning trait is, it seems, his Nobel prize, the victory he's been dining out on for years.

Because this is an Ian McEwan novel, you know from the first page that this glory will be taken from Beard, and that it will be Beard's own doing, and that he will deserve every ounce of awfulness that awaits him, and that -- and this is McEwan's magic -- you'll still somehow feel bad for him at the end. And it's true. That's the one achievement of this book: it takes a pathetic man, makes him worse and better for the space of 10 years, and then leaves him in more trouble than he's even worth at the end.

I laughed aloud at several of the situations and lines in this book, so it's not without its momentary joy. I think McEwan remains one of the better "serious" writers that's out there who can look coldly upon absurdity and make you, the reader, realize that it's not so absurd, that bizarre things do happen every day. (Every scene in the arctic in the book confirms this for me).

I'll need at least a year to recharge my sunniness, though, before I tackle more McEwan. ...more

I did not resist reading The Hunger Games out of any feeling that it would be average -- I've watched, up close and later via Facebook, as many readerI did not resist reading The Hunger Games out of any feeling that it would be average -- I've watched, up close and later via Facebook, as many readers I trust tore through all three of the books in a binge, singing their praises along the way. Instead, I avoided starting Suzanne Collins's trilogy until now because I believed they'd be captivating and, well, kind of depressing.

I was right on all accounts. Content-wise, the book was captivating, and it was depressing, and it was pretty thoughtful in places (though I guess that there will be further introspection as the stories go on and the characters all grow up). It wasn't particularly juvenile in its subject matter; its ending was unpredictable even though, well, I pretty much knew how it was going to end. The story follows practical Katniss Everdeen, a hunter and a teenager living in coal-rich, cash-poor District 12 in a post-apocalyptic state where America used to lie. Katniss, through unusual circumstances, is chosen to be the female tribute in the mandatory battle royale -- the Hunger Games -- in which the Capitol forces every district to participate. The 24 children -- aged 12 to nearly 18 -- compete to survive in a domed, biosphere-like arena that's televised like the world's largest Big Brother house. The story hinges on whether Katniss and her District 12 companion, a baker's son named Peeta, will survive (or will have to kill each other) and what it will cost them to do so.

What's most interesting in this story is that it's managing to tell a story about telling a story using some very, very old suspense novel tricks. Keeping the audience engaged is important -- we read about this how the Capitol shapes the story of the games, always providing a twist to keep the viewers watching. Collins does exactly the same thing to her own readers. Every chapter has a pattern: each one ends on a question (what's going to happen to Prim?) and each one starts with an answer that ends up only raising more questions (what's going to happen to Katniss?). It's Dickensian, almost; it's an old Arthur Conan Doyle trick. This book could be easily serialized to keep people aching for more. Collins, a former book editor, has to know how effective this storytelling device is, how perfectly an author -- like an all-seeing government that can control the setting and plot with only a thought -- can maniupulate her readers throughout the tale.

The story won me over, certainly. I'll pick up Catching Fire soon....more